


familiar

by supernatasha



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 00:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5071252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernatasha/pseuds/supernatasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laurel looks cotton candy edible – a delicious pink flush across pale peach cheeks, wide sky blue eyes against dark lashes.</p><p>“Michaela, hi,” she starts, and you kiss her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	familiar

Betrayal comes easy to you now.

You feel the comfortable ache in your chest – a very strange thing, that ache. You can understand why they call it heartbreak. It’s almost a stuttering you feel in your whole body. Warm face, eyes filming over with tears, a shattering that starts in your fingers and legs and exhausts every muscle in you.

It’s in the base of your spine, the hurting, like a physical mass.

You’re lying on the floor in your cashmere pink sweater, nice lace underwear, and pearls. There’s a bottle of wine with maybe half a glass left in it. The wine is the same color as the pearls and the fact is satisfying.

( _familiar_ )

Is it sad that you know this so well? That you know in another hour or so, the tears are going to start and last well into the earliest hours of the morning? That you’ve already got three Advils and a glass of water by the side of the bed for when you finally do decide to sleep for an exhausting two hours before your alarm tells you the world hasn’t stopped turning while you grieve?

Is it sad that you’re grieving a boy again?

Is it sad that you fucked your possibly dead ex-client’s foster brother?

You wonder that. The wine wonders with you.

Wait –

Your phone is ringing, that quiet professional dull tone you had spent hours deciding on.

( _and you spent years on aiden_ )

( _weeks on levi_ )

( _stupid girl_ )

There’s a name on the screen that you kind of read with blurry eyes, that your brain doesn’t really register until you’re actually answering “Hello,” with a slurred tongue and you hear “Michaela? Are you okay?”

Shit. It’s Laurel.

( _“she’s mine,” laurel had said_ )

( _ignore the tingling feeling in your belly_ )

You clear your throat, trying to pull a sober version somewhere out of your drunk brain, a version that won’t beg Laurel to come over and lie on the floor with you, to do bad things with you – to you.

“What is it?”

“I’m just checking up on you. How are you doing after the whole Levi thing?”

“I’m perfect.”

Well, that came out a lot more sarcastic than you aimed for. You try again.

“I’m okay, just figuring some things out.”

She doesn’t seem convinced and her voice is concerned, a nice soft concern that makes you think of her puppy eyes, “How much have you had to drink?”

You roll your eyes, then realize she can’t see you, and make a noncommittal noise instead that you hope she interprets as eye rolling.

“Are you home?”

“Yes,” you answer, regretting the single syllable the very second it’s out of your mouth.

“I’m on my way,” she answers.

( _fuck_ )

“No, Laurel, I don’t –”

She’s already hung up and you pretend you’re too drunk to text her and tell her not to come.

::

Getting off the floor is an effort. You manage it anyway.

You put on a bathrobe, a pale blue silken thing you brought as a treat when you had made the Keating Five months ago. It was a celebration then; it’s a mourning now. You leave your sweater crumpled on the bathroom floor, knowing full well you’ll hate yourself the next morning for not hanging it up, knowing full well you don’t care in this moment. It feels like your share of punishment.

You stare at yourself in the mirror – or, well, at least you try. Your eyes don’t quite focus enough. You’ve never thought of yourself as a lesbian, nor as a bisexual, nor - to be entirely honest - as heterosexual. It’s starting to seem more and more like you just don’t think at all.

Maybe it’s time you started.

The bell is ringing.

Laurel must have been close when she called.

Stumbling to the door on unsteady legs, you look through the peephole at the blurry blue coat and vague head of black hair. The tingle in your belly returns.

( _tell yourself it’s because you’re drunk_ )

When you open the door, Laurel looks startled and the tip of her nose is red from the cold. You let the door close behind her. She looks edible, like cotton candy – the delicious pink flush across her pale peach cheeks, her wide sky blue eyes against dark lashes.

“Michaela, hi,” she starts, and you kiss her.

::

Let’s be honest, you weren’t actually planning that kiss.

Let’s be honest, yes, you were.

::

She is cold – maybe you’re just feverishly warm.

The taste on your tongue isn’t wine, it’s harder, some flavor she brought with her – rum?

Laurel seems ready for the kiss, her hands are instantly on your neck, her fingers freezing against the nape of your neck. Her body is against you, something hard in her pocket –phone, maybe? – digging into your hip, lips everywhere all at once, mouth, chin, neck.

She’s soft where men have angles, she’s yielding where men are tough, she presses in close like the kiss is everything, and it is everything - oh god, she is everything -

A second later, you pull away.

She’s breathing hard and you almost can’t breathe at all, and you're turned on but you're nervous.

( _familiar_ )

“Wow,” she declares. “I mean, wow.”

That’s not very articulate.

“Sorry,” you reply, which is also not very articulate.

“Are you kidding?” she demands, “that was awesome,” and comes back in your space, head already bent, aimed for your lips again.

You lay your hand flat against her chest, against her breasts, feeling the outline of her bra, and your resolve weakens all over again. Before it can completely crumble away you say, “I don’t know why I did that.”

“I do,” she murmurs, “Because you’ve been wanting to do that since you met me.”

You’ve been wanting to do that for maybe a few weeks at most, but whatever. You don’t correct her, instead saying, “I’ve had a little too much to drink, I think.”

Laurel nods, sympathy on her features, and she bites her lip.

You quickly turn away, pretending not to notice, but you are longing and she is desire and before you are aware of it, you have turned back toward her and her sad sky eyes and her dark cloud hair and the way the light hits the angle of her jaw and --

“Do you want to go to bed?” she asks.

You nod, not trusting yourself to speak because you’re pretty sure the next words out of your mouth are going to be “fuck me,” and that really is a regret you can do without tonight.

You can’t stop thinking about the taste of rum.

::

She gets your teeth brushed and your makeup off, somehow gets you under the covers. You’re taking deep breaths, trying to sober up despite the bottle of wine you had downed, trying somehow desperately not to give in to the throbbing of your body, to her body.

A second later, she slides into bed beside you and your hands touch under the covers.

Your breath hitches.

You try not to tremble.

A giggle blossoms from her lips. “Michaela, it’s okay. You can relax. I promise I won’t try anything.”

That’s a shame. You really want her to.

“I’m really sorry about Levi. Watching him get arrested must have been rough.”

And here’s the thing you really don’t know how to explain, but you open your mouth and try anyway, “It wasn’t hard, if you want to know the truth. I mean - yeah, sure. I’m hurt. But not by him, you know? It’s not Levi himself that hurt me. It’s just, I don’t know, it’s the idea that there’s no one there who’s just there for me, and by there, I don’t mean someone giving me a ring or a wedding dress. It’s the fact that everyone keeps leaving me and people keep dying, and who am I supposed to trust?”

Silence.

Your face burns red. Something equal parts embarrassment and disappointment settles on your shoulders.

And, finally, Laurel tells you in a small voice, “I know what you mean. I like Frank, but I’m not stupid. I don’t trust him. I like having sex with him, but that’s about it.”

“He is handsome,” you allow. “I think I would like having sex with him, too.”

You shouldn’t have said that, because now you’re thinking about sex and she’s probably thinking about sex, and you’re both in bed together with nothing separating you but your drunken willpower.

( _and your silk robe_ )

Her grip around your hand tightens.

When did she start holding your hand? You don’t remember. You don’t mind.

“Laurel -”

“Shh,” she whispers into the darkness. “Go to sleep.”

You feel the mattress shift and she turns toward you, gently nudging your shoulder so you turn as well. It takes your muddled brain nearly a whole minute to realize she’s spooning you. It feels nice. Your eyes close and she mumbles something that you don’t quite make out, but the fact is, just having her there mumbling something is enough.

::

When you jolt awake at 3:16 AM, you realize what she had said.

“You can trust me.”

::

Your alarm goes off when the thin watery light of the autumn sun is casting your room into pale yellow. You quickly shut the beeping off. Laurel is still asleep.

Somehow during the night, the two of you had managed to disentangle and become separate limbs and bodies again, her curled into a ball facing your way. Your bed is warm. She is warm.

You’re thinking of her kiss again, feeling heat on the tips of your ears, and you can’t help but wonder if that kiss was just the start to other things.

( _better things_ )

Almost as if she knows you’re staring, her eyelids flicker open.

You can make out the tiny sliver of sunlight from your window coming up in the blue flecked irises of her eyes. It might be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

“Good morning,” she says sleepily, the first words of her day, and they’re to you. You can’t explain why that makes you happy.

“Morning,” you mumble back.

“You okay?” she asks as she had last night, but you’re not – you’re completely fucking wrecked because waking up next to Laurel has been the best morning you’ve had since Aiden and you don’t know how to tell her this, how to start this, what to say, what to do.

“Do you want breakfast?” you ask, and you think it’s not a bad start.

She smiles, and the feeling inside you is back, the tingling.

( _familiar_ )

“How about we do coffee and breakfast from the deli around the courthouse? They have the best scrambled eggs I’ve ever tasted.”

And maybe it’s the morning sun, maybe it’s the warmth of her body, maybe it’s the three inches between you and the softness of her eyes that makes you bold enough to say, “It’s a date.”

Laurel raises an eyebrow but her voice is amused and excited when she repeats, “It’s a date!”

No, it’s not a bad start at all.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This pairing deserves more fic :/. I see them starting out as a slow burn if it ever happens in canon. As much as I want to see them go bang bang straight off the bat, I just think Michaela would really try to go about doing it the "right" way and Laurel would respect that. Would appreciate thoughts on their relationship!! :)


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